Digital Assets Innovation Lead

About us

We’re the world’s leading provider of secure financial messaging services, headquartered in Belgium. We are the way the world moves value – across borders, through cities and overseas. No other organisation can address the scale, precision, pace and trust that this demands, and we’re proud to support the global economy.

We’re unique too. We were established to find a better way for the global financial community to move value – a reliable, safe and secure approach that the community can trust, completely. We’re always striving to be better and are constantly evolving in an ever-changing landscape, without undermining that trust. Five decades on, our vibrant community reflects the complexity and diversity of the financial ecosystem. We innovate diligently, test exhaustively, then implement fast. In a connected and exciting era, our mission has never been more relevant. Swift now has a presence in 200+ countries and legal territories to serve a community of more than 12,000 banks and financial institutions.

The Innovation team’s mission is drive innovation to address the most important trends facing Swift and the global financial community. We are champions of collaborative and responsible innovation – a key objective for our company. In that context, one of the key streams of work within our team is exploring digital assets and digital money. In this space, Swift is actively engaging with central banks, financial institutions, technology providers, and academics to investigate and experiment on the potential for tokenisation and interoperability.

In this role, you will provide your business expertise in DeFi and TradFi and your knowledge of digital assets and money to develop innovative solutions to the opportunities and challenges raised by tokenisation for cross-border payments, securities and trade (such as: interoperability between different digital networks and existing payment rails in domestic and cross-border contexts, and interlinking between multiple digital networks, together with development of shared ledgers).

Responsibilities

• Design compelling solutions, products and services for our clients (central banks, market infrastructures, commercial banks) to enable them to scale use of digital assets and money
• Create viable and scalable industry wide models to enable the efficient and effective adoption of digital assets and money
• Guide business decisions around Swift’s new solutions to ensure that they reflect genuine customer and commercial need, address legal, regulatory and governance considerations, and solve real world challenges in payments
• Understand unsolved opportunities and barriers in payments and securities, develop innovative experiments to address them, and work with technical engineers in Innovation to lead the development of novel feature implementation
• Work with multiple clients simultaneously to understand where and how our Swift can assist them in meeting their digital objectives
• Participate in collaborative industry initiatives, such as standards setting and shared infrastructures, enable those to drive towards valuable outcomes
• Serve as a thought leader and a key driver in defining our digital asset and money innovation offerings
• Assess the business capabilities and limitations of technology vendors, and, where appropriate, evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of DLT or non-DLT technology
• Stay current with technology advancements in the digital assets and money space and identify innovations that can contribute to Swift strategic goals and provide business value, including suggestions for roadmaps where appropriate

Qualifications

Technical Skills & Core Competencies:

• Demonstrable experience in engaging in the development of digital assets and money
• Demonstrable experience in enabling institutional adoption of DeFi innovations
• Understanding of blockchains, open source protocols, or experience of distributed applications
• A passion for cutting edge technologies, along with the ability to quickly and continuously learn new concepts
• Commercial, functional and technical knowledge of payments for banks, central banks and market infrastructures
• Business understanding of existing payment and securities systems and concepts, such as correspondent banking, settlement/clearing, RTGS, etc
• At least 10 years of overall experience, at least 5 years in payments and/or securities
• Experience leading, developing and architecting enterprise-level financial solutions
• Understanding of policy, regulation, and economics with regards to central banks and currency management
• Excellent interpersonal, negotiation, project planning, judgment, leadership, decision-making, written and oral communication and problem-solving skills
• Appetite for the business: You like technology and you love to use it to create solutions to help your customers
• Agile mindset: You like to learn and continuously improve the way we work
• Quality-oriented: You know that production-ready software takes more than just committing code
• Security and resilience mindset: You know that security is always top of mind and are conscious of keeping in line with Security policy

Professional competencies:

• A self-starter with strong ability to quickly adapt and respond to change
• An out-of-the-box thinker, and a doer as well as a thinker
• A leader who inspires others to deliver on a common goal
• Open-minded, solutions oriented, and a true team player who gains energy through intensive collaboration
• Customer oriented and quality mindset – we continually strive to deliver true customer value
• Willingness to continuously learn and take ownership of projects and tasks
• Experience of managing teams across multiple functions and geographies
• A team player keen to work in a diverse multicultural environment, able to build and maintain working relationships across internal and external organizations
• Strong verbal and written communication skills in English

Nice to have:

• Demonstrated ability to independently research technical topics and generate creative and innovative solutions using design thinking, lean and agile frameworks

Experience:

• 5+ years of experience in payments, requiring strong business and technical understanding

Education:

• University degree in relevant field. Or equivalent work experience

What we offer

We put you in control of career

We give you a competitive package

We help you perform at your best

We help you make a difference

We give you the freedom to be yourself

We give you the freedom to be yourself. We are creating an environment of unique individuals – like you – with different perspectives on the financial industry and the world. A diverse and inclusive environment in which everyone’s voice counts and where you can reach your full potential.

If you believe you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact us to request accommodation.

Don’t meet every single requirement? At Swift, we are dedicated to building a workplace where people can bring their full selves and ideas to the team, so if you are excited about this role, we encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every single qualification.